Fixing my Kinesis Advantage

# Kinesis Redux Source: [https://lukaswerner.com/post/2026-08-25@kinesis-advantage-build](https://lukaswerner.com/post/2026-08-25@kinesis-advantage-build) [Check out my original post on my initial repair of this keyboard\.](https://lukaswerner.com/post/2024-06-21@Kinesis-Ergo-Build) --- ## Revisiting, Repairing, Succeeding\! After my initial blog post I brought the keyboard to university where I used it occasionally, unfortunately it would appear that when I completed the conversion of the keyboard I had caused some damage on the circuit boards that caused intermittent issues with the ability to type\. After storing it on its side it would appear that one of the rows no longer functioned properly which naturally, rendered the keyboard functionally useless\. After putting the keyboard on an extended timeout and realizing how much I needed my split board for the long amounts of typing I had gone through for my coursework, it was time to fix the board\. My first attempt at trying to fix the board was sticking my multimeter in continuity mode all around the boards to try to figure out what could have been wrong\. A few hours later I threw in the towel and decided to look at alternate options for PCBs\. I had heard that Kinesis offered new PCBs for a reasonable price\. This seems to no longer be the case as when I emailed Kinesis they told me that they could only sell me the key wells for $60 each side, with pre\-soldered switches\. This was outside my budget so I instead opted for the more manual approach of ordering a custom PCB which the quote was under the price of one key well \(including shipping and tariffs\)\. ## Repair Silly goose that I am, I ordered the PCBs and hoped to find the extra components — like cables, connectors, and diodes — on amazon, in order to avoid tariffs from the removed de minimis exemption\. I asked for help from a friend of mine to find the amazon listings, but alas they didn’t have all the parts I needed\. I bite the bullet and purchased the parts I needed to finish the build, or so I thought\. In my eagerness to complete this project I didn’t double\-check all the values of the cables and forgot to order the 5 wide one and instead ordered a 7 wide one\. Once the diodes and the first set of plugs arrived I took apart my old key wells in order to rescue as many switches as I could as I really wanted to use my Gateron Baby Kangaroos\. At this point I had found out that some of the switches were not responding under a continuity test\. In order to avoid putting more switches under undue stress I measured all switches after they came out of the wells and tossed any that had an iffy reading\. Likely this was overkill but I was not going to take any chances\.  Having completed each key well and thumb cluster I got around to testing out these AliExpress special Raspberry[Pi Picos](https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/)that I had ordered\. Unfortunately, it was at this moment when I tried plugging in the pico to my mac when I noticed that the mac would not recognize it at all\. I could not write any MicroPython, CircuitPython, or get into the UF2 bootloader\. Upon connecting it to my Linux machine I was able to get it connected so I got to building the firmware\. This turned out to be a mini journey on its own\. My Linux machines run[Alpine](https://alpinelinux.org/), and[Bazzite](https://bazzite.gg/)— I’m aware that this puts me in a special kind of hurt but I’m okay with that\. However, getting every and all build system working on them can be a hassle if not impossible at certain times\. The firmware of my board,[QMK](https://qmk.fm/), does not support compilation on MUSL systems, which ruled out my Alpine machines, and getting a working toolchain on my Bazzite machine seemed exceedingly complicated as that uses immutable filesystems\. As a work around I would compile the keyboard firmware on my Mac and then transfer the finished blob to my Linux machine which could mount the[UF2 bootloader](https://github.com/microsoft/uf2)\.  It was around this point I had finished soldering all the boards, I had put in the pico and I had everything screwed into place that I had realized that the 5 pin cables were missing\. Okay I thought I’ll just order the correct ones and wait a week or so\. Again my eagerness to complete the project had failed me\. You can only imagine my shock when I realized that the cables I had ordered were only single headed — meaning there was only a connector on one side leaving bare wires on the other end\. By sheer luck I had ordered enough cables that I could make the correct number out of the ones I had on hand\. ## Success\! Feeling rather accomplished that I had finished working around that stupid problem I put it all together — minus the function row as that require harvesting the connectors from the original board, which I didn’t have the patience to do yet — I brought it up to my room to check if it worked, and nothing\. I let it sit there for the rest of the day as I had other things to do\. When I got back I went through my standard troubleshooting regiment and tried it on another operating system, and low\-and\-behold it worked\! It seemed that this Pico would just not work on Mac\. Again to the drawing board, I guess I have to use a genuine Pico, I should have known better to trust a cheap clone of a product\. I dug out my Pico, the first one I ever owned and got included in a copy of[PiMag](https://magazine.raspberrypi.com/)many years ago when the Pico first came out, and I was hoping to save for a better use\. I thew in the new board and it immediately was recognized by the Mac and I was able to load the QMK directly to the board as intended\. That brings me to now, where I’m typing out this blog post exclusively on the Kinesis\. It almost gives me more joy to type on now that I have successfully built, nay rebuilt, this icon of the ergonomic keyboard world\. At this point the main thing that annoys me is how hollow the inside of the board sounds and how tall it sits off the top of my desk\. In order for the keyboard to be situated perfectly for me ergonomically it would have to be in my desk in order for my palms to comfortably float above the board\.